Tuesday, October 25, 2011

This is the smartest bunch of people ever to occupy government office. From the WSJ Error: USAJobs.gov

Americans in search of federal employment can go to a website called USAJobs.gov, which matches openings with applicants. Since 2004, the feds have outsourced the site's operation to Monster.com. Good call by whoever was in charge in 2004. Monster.com is the private company that pioneered employment websites and is today the largest job search engine in the world.

But 18 months ago the "smart" Obama Office of Personnel Management decided the federal government could do a better job of running USAJobs.gov. It spent some $6 million developing a new in-house version of the site, promising to improve the job-search experience. It unveiled its creation two weeks ago. It's a monster all right.

The volume of requests instantly crushed government servers, slowed the system and locked out thousands of applicants. Naturally, the site has a Facebook page. Naturally, the comment queue is boiling over. Examples:

"Why am I having to do the same search 3 times before anything shows up?" "Over one week now and I still haven't received my password reset email!!" "USAJOBS WEB SITE IS A DISASTER!" "I entered Delaware and got Germany jobs and all of the Forest Service."

There is a Facebook page on which frustrated job-seekers are complaining.

Example:

still can't get through. I can't even get to my old profile to update anything. What's up with the new program? "Sorry to make you wait-if you try back in a few minutes, we should be good to go." At least this time it wasn't a blank page.

Time after time a plaintive reply comes back from the Team Obama:

[name], please send us an email to outreach@opm.gov so we can help. Thanks!

A comment by a professional IT guy who has been called up to active duty:

I am a mobilized Army Reserve officer serving on active duty in a US-based headquarters. Before being mobilized I had a 20-year IT career in the productive sector. I am continually astonished and dismayed by how completely incompetent our IT support is. Anything they do (or try to do) is invariably slow, inefficient, and usually broken for long stretches. The people who work in IT support are a mixture - some are good and some are idiots, but none of them has anything like the work ethic expected in the productive sector, and nobody is accountable for anything. No productive sector company could ever tolerate our level of outages and stay in business. In any decent productive-sector company, these people would be fired in a heartbeat. Which is probably why they work here....

And here's the real problem for disappointed job seekers, even if they get through they are unlikely to land a job. Why? The entire search is mostly eyewash designed to meet regulations for advertising the job openings. The people who are going to be hired are already waiting in the wings.

What the government does not tell you is, most of the openings posted on USAJobs are already filled. They are going through the search “EEOC” motions to check off a bureaucratic box and people who go through the laborious process of applying are SOL. I worked at a certain government agency while still in uniform and saw this first hand. It is a true waste of time and resources. But heck, it’s the federal government, its intentions that count, not results.